The Power Index‘s Paul Barry wrote an illuminating profile on South Australian Senator Don Farrell last year. He reported:
Don Farrell was one of the players in the coup that brought down Kevin Rudd in June 2010. He also orchestrated the mugging of South Australian Premier Mike Rann, although he left the deed to others.
And although you may never have heard of him, this softly-spoken Labor powerbroker has actually been king of the hill in South Australia for the past two decades.
”Don has absolute power in the Right,” says the ALP’s former deputy leader Ralph Clarke. ”He controls the preselection directly or indirectly of every MP in South Australia. If you want to get on, you get on with Don.”
Farrell also decides who is the state’s Labor leader and who gets into cabinet. At the end of the day, it is a simple proposition, explains Clarke: “He has got the numbers.”
Except this time he didn’t, bowing to the pressure brought by left-wing heavy Anthony Albanese and others in the Labor Party who thought tipping Finance Minister Penny Wong out of the top Senate ticket position in SA was not a good look for a party that voters believe is beholden to factional interests.
Farrell said today his decision to swap with Wong was about putting the party’s interests before his.
There’s a first time for everything.
I know this is rather pedantic, but wasn;t Penny Wong No. 2 on the ticket in 2007?
I know it is fashionable (amongst the LNP at least) to talk about Wong’s *demotion* to No. 2 on the ticket, to Crikey saying she was *tipped out* of the top Senate ticket position – but can’t you at least be accurate and at least call it as it is?
She can’t have been demoted or tipped out of No. 1 on the ticket if she was neve there in the first place. Shouldn’t you rather talk about the failed *expectation* that the ALP should place Wong at No. 1?
Is this an example of the ALP always doing the right thing, after exhausting the alternatives?